How much does it take to be in the 1%? It definitely doesn’t take millions, and it all depends on where you live.

According to a recent report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, to be in the 1% looks something like this:

Officially, to be considered in the top 1% in America, your household income would need to be well north of $380,000, according to IRS 2014 data. On a state-by-state level, the benchmark fluctuates, as you can see below.

Beyond the fun imaging, the EPI uses this map and the accompanying report to show a grim trend: The rich are getting richer, while the poor aren’t going anywhere, growth-wise.

According to the EPI report, income growth has been lopsided since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, with the top 1% of income earners grabbing an “alarming” share of the growth. In 39 states, the top income earners have captured more than 50% of all economic growth between 2009-2012. Meanwhile, the bottom 99% saw incomes grow by just 20%, according to the report.

These findings are in line with other research. Pew cites that America’s wealth gap between middle and upper-class citizens is the widest on record. On a global level, Oxfam reports that the world’s top 1% may soon own a majority of the wealth, a problem so worrying that it made it atop the agenda at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

More on the map

The most unequal states in the U.S.? According to the EPI report, New York and Connecticut had the largest gaps in 2012 between the average incomes of the top 1% and the bottom 99%, with the 1% earning more than 48 times the income of the poorest residents.

There are also outliers on the map: It takes $502,000 to be in the 1% in North Dakota — a higher salary than is needed to be in the top echelon in both California and Texas. North Dakota was the only state to see a significant increase in household incomes and a decrease in poverty rates during the period of the Great Recession, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, largely because of its strong energy sector.

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13
comments:

gruaud
said...

Interesting, but flawed. Making $300K or more each year doesn't really make one a one percenter as to how #occupy portrays it, it's just annual salary.

Show us a list of where the 1% threshold of net worth falls in each state. There you go. Above that is the true 1%.

And then you can look at your mortgage, your savings, your 401K, your medical bills, your other debt and see why rich people need even more tax cuts.

Well besides the factoid that it takes waaaaay more than an "income" of $380k or more to "make it" to the 1%, what's the point of this for RWD?

And what's the solution to it? No doubt, RWD would jubilantly clap and cheer for LESS, not more, taxes (of all sorts - on income, on capital gains, or estates, etc) on the mega-super-obscenely wealthy.

Because as we've all seen since the days of Zombie Reagan that the only thing trickling down is 1% pee on your head, and soon they'll start charging you, the 99%, for that "privilege."

Or does RWD live in the delusional fantasy that he, too, is a member of the 1%? Or just about to get there? And then it's all: I got MINE, EFF you, suckah$$$!

You liberals will never admit that a lot of people bust their asses in this great country of limitless opporrunity.

Wrong. I know that lots of people bust their asses. I also know that only a tiny fraction of them will ever strike it rich.

What you wingnuts will never admit is that there are lots more people who work hard and will still never get ahead.

They earned their wealth.

Some do. Others just inherit. And many go the Romney route: "earning" their wealth by fucking with the livelihood of others. Wall Street is crawling with them, parasites who don't care whose blood they suck dry as long as it earns them their precious bonuses.

Wingnuts need to admit that hard work does not always equate to material success, and not all wealth is built in a moral or positive way.

I can't speak for the others but I don't envy them however I think it's delusional to lump the few that actually earned it on merit in with those that inherit huge amounts or get it by fleecing the true backbone of the county and then bemoaning how victimized they are. Gruaud has it right. Critical thinking isn't a real long suit for Conservatives and thank you for proving the point with such an idiotic statement. Plus, I have a pretty good pot to piss in.

I see: Rush & Fox are still pushing the lying propaganda that everyone who is mega-wealthy "earned" it by "working so hard." Yeah, right, sure.

Mostly super rich people are that way because they won the sperm and egg lottery. Just ask the Koch brothers & the Walton spawns about how "hard" they worked to be born to their parents. And how "hard" they work to not pay their workers adequately.

And by the way, just ask the Walton spawns how nice it is for them to provide instructions for their under-paid workers how to apply for various kinds of welfare because even the Walton spawns know fully well that their workers cannot live on their slave wages. So, you conservatives AGREE with providing welfare - from YOUR tax dollars but certainly not from the Walton family's taxes because they don't pay taxes anymore (because they "work so hard" at getting lobbyists to make sure that they don't have to) - so that YOU can help PAY for WalMart employees to barely survive.

So conservatives apparently enjoy paying Welfare so that the mega-super rich, who "work so hard," don't have to pay taxes. Righty-o. Got it.

Such a totally bogus "argument," along with the brain-dead notion that anyone who is allegedly "liberal" is worthless, poor, doesn't "work hard," and is "just jealous."

Nifty how no links are provided to prove such "facts"... mainly because it's not true.

Thanks for showing up and proving how many conservatives just drink their Kool Aid and spout back the worthless talking points that prove nothing.

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